Drug boat lost, then found washed up

Updated
November 16, 2012 19:01:00

Authorities have discovered a decomposed body and 204 kilograms of cocaine on a yacht which ran aground off the coast of Tonga. The 13-metre yacht left Ecuador in August, with 204 one-kilo blocks of cocaine which authorities say was destined for the Australian market.

MARK COLVIN: It's one of those massive drug hauls police like to show the cameras. In this case, the Australian Federal Police, and cocaine with an estimated street value of more than $100-million.

But the circumstances leading up to the discovery of these 204 kilograms of drugs are as mysterious as they are gruesome. They involve a small yacht, a badly decomposed body, and Australian Government agencies which temporarily lost the lot.

Will Ockenden reports.

WILL OCKENDEN: When a 13 metre yacht left Ecuador on the 20th August, to a bystander it would have looked like a normal pleasure cruise.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration knew better, and it picked up the phone to Australia's Federal Police and Customs and Border Protection.

Assistant commissioner David Sharpe is the AFP's acting national manager for serious and organised crime.

DAVID SHARPE: That information related to an organised crime syndicate that intended to utilise a 13 metre vessel loaded with cocaine destined for the Australian market.

WILL OCKENDEN: So far, all was good. The boat was being tracked across the Pacific Ocean, the drugs secure.

Then a hiccup.

On the 5th of October, as the yacht was just outside the territorial waters of the Cook Islands, the boat and the drugs went missing.

The AFP's David Sharpe says an alert was sent out to Pacific Island nations to keep a look out.

DAVID SHARPE: I don't think anyone's responsible for losing it. If you look at the vast expanses of the ocean and I think the fact that we knew that that vessel was containing cocaine and was headed to Australia and the fact that we were able to stop it coming here, whether you call it luck or whether we call it you know a gap over there in the ocean that we just can't cover. We still have 200 kilos that we've seized.

WILL OCKENDEN: The yacht was rediscovered a month later, washed up on an uninhabited atoll 10 nautical miles from Tonga.

As the crow flies, that's 1,600 kilometres from where it went missing.

DAVID SHARPE: It's a vast ocean and it's very hard to monitor and track all vessel movements through there. So, the thing all we could do is put a net around it using our transnational crime networks.

WILL OCKENDEN: Did you have any idea that it had managed to go 1,600 kilometres though?

DAVID SHARPE: Look we had our investigative techniques, I can't comment too much on, but we had an idea of the area that it was in and we'd conducted a number of searches of that area. But physically locating a small yacht in that ocean and sighting it is quite difficult.

WILL OCKENDEN: When the authorities eventually rediscovered the yacht, they say they found 204 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the hull. They also discovered the remains of a man, who's thought to have died about the time the boat was lost a month earlier.

In the words of the AFP's David Sharpe, the man's body was "badly decomposed".

(to David Sharpe) When you say badly decomposed, how badly decomposed was he?

DAVID SHARPE: How badly decomposed is badly decomposed? It's a body that has obviously been sitting out in the sun for some time and it would have been a pretty ordinary sight, a horrific sight for the people that responded to that and found the body.

WILL OCKENDEN: I can't imagine it would smell too good either.

DAVID SHARPE: No, being in the sun, I can't imagine.

WILL OCKENDEN: The man's death is now the subject to a Tongan coronial inquiry.

Authorities also have several more missing pieces of the puzzle to find. Two men from an international drug syndicate left Ecuador, only one has been discovered.

(to David Sharpe) Where's the other man?

DAVID SHARPE: Well, that's subject to our enquiries.

WILL OCKENDEN: Do you have any idea though where that other man is?

DAVID SHARPE: As I said, I can't comment on that. It's part of the coronial inquiry so we're not able to comment on that.

WILL OCKENDEN: The AFP says it's the fourth boat since 2010 which has tried to import cocaine into Australia, with a combined total of 1.1 tonnes.